Apr. 17, 2013

Dearborn attorney Majed Moughni holds what is suspposed to be a halal chicken sandwich at a McDonald's in Dearborn that sold fake halal sandwiches. He led an effort challenging a settlement in the case. / REGINA H. BOONE/Detroit Free Press

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Detroit Free Press Staff Writer

A Wayne County judge approved a controversial $700,000 settlement Wednesday between McDonald’s and some members of the Muslim community over claims that the restaurant sold non-halal chicken products at one of its restaurants in Dearborn.

Judge Kathleen Macdonald approved the settlement in court. It will allocate $275,000 to the Huda Clinic, a Muslim health center in Detroit; $150,000 to the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, and $25,000 to Ahmed Ahmed, a Dearborn Heights man who filed a lawsuit against McDonald’s in 2011. The remainder is for attorney fees.

The settlement “was positive,” said Dearborn attorney Kassem Dakhlallah, one of the attorneys who filed the lawsuit. “It allowed us to educate the public on halal, religious customs and practices. It’s a good thing for the community.”

Critics, though, said the settlement should have gone to the Muslims affected, not to organizations that are based in Detroit or not affiliated with Islam. They’re calling for a boycott of McDonald’s over how it handled the case, saying it tried to squash dissent.

McDonald’s sells halal chicken products at only two of its stores in U.S., both of which are in Dearborn, which has a significant concentration of Arab-American Muslims. According to the lawsuit, McDonald’s was sometimes selling non-halal chicken even when customers asked for halal chicken. Halal is the Muslim equivalent of kosher and requires that meat be processed according to Islamic guidelines such as reciting a prayer while the animal is being killed.

McDonald’s never admitted to any wrongdoing in the settlement, which had been tentatively reached in January. But it wanted to resolve the case to “provide support to organizations that ... serve and benefit the local community,” it said in an earlier statement. A spokesman for McDonald’s didn’t comment on the case Wednesday.

McDonald’s attorneys put legal pressure on people who criticized the settlement, resulting in Judge Macdonald clamping down in February on a popular Facebook page that criticized the agreement. She issued an injunction that effectively shut down the page for Dearborn Area Community Members, which is run by Dearborn attorney and activist Majed Moughni. The injunction also ordered Moughni not to talk about the settlement.

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After an outcry from free-speech advocates and attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union and Public Citizen, Macdonald lifted her injunection against the Facebook page last month. Paul Levy, an attorney from Public Citizen in Washington, came to Detroit to represent Moughni, saying that McDonald’s was trying to use its corporate muscle to squash criticism of the agreement.

“She suppressed the speech of the community,” said Moughni. “She scared off a lot of people ... a lot of people were terrified” to speak up against the settlement.

Moughni said the judge acted because of McDonald’s aggressive legal actions in court.

“They did something that was unconscionable in a free society,” Moughni said. “They placed fear in people who were speaking up against an unjust settlement.”

An assistant to Macdonald said she couldn’t comment on the case.

But Dakhlallah said: “I don’t agree that McDonald’s has tried to limit anyone’s free-speech rights. ... They’re paying a substantial amount of money towards charities that are going to benefit the community.”

After the tentative agreement in January, notices were placed in local mosques telling Muslims they had the right to object to the settlement. Dakhlallah said there were only 64 objections total and 16 who opted out. He said that “most class-actions have a higher number” of objections, which shows that the settlement was popular.